How to find Fatwood (The easiest way)

my girlfriend broke up with me yesterday. she said she needed "fatwood" didn't know what she meant but this video helped a lot, thanks!!

When I was a kid, I was recruited one summer to help my cousin harvest fatwood, or what we called heart, from long since fallen fir trees. We would drill them in a very particular fashion with hand augers, then place 1/8 or 1/10 sticks of tnt all around in the holes where we knew the fatwood would be then blow them all at once. A big tree with say a 4' diameter might take a half stick or a bit more. When the blast was done, if we did everything well, what was left was just the heart with minimal pulp still sticking to it which we cleaned up with hatchets and chisels. The blast didn't really hurt the heart, it just blew the soft pulp off. That stuff is super dense and very heavy. What we would get was much more dense and waxy than what this video shows and it was almost pumpkin orange and sometimes had thin black streaks in it. It carved almost like soap and didn't really have a grain to it . It had a lovely, sweet smell something like turpentine but sweeter. Some of the pieces were 6 or 7 feet long with a 6 or 8" diameter base and tapering down to nothing as it ran up the tree. These were exceedingly old logs that had fallen hundreds of years prior and were already too rotten for the loggers to take when they went through the area in the late 1800's and early 1900's. We used slivers of it for candles because it lit easy and burned for a super long time compared to wood plus it had a terrific smell. That's how my cousin made much of his meager living for years. I would love to be able to do that again someday, it was super fun and exciting! From what I gather, that kind of heart is fairly rare because you have to have just the right conditions like giant trees (I think these were Hem Fir?) and a relatively dry climate. If it is too wet, the wood rots before it has a chance to consolidate the rosins into the heart. We would only find these on the South slope near the top of the mountain, the North slope didn't seem to have the big, soft, dense hearts nor did the valley bottoms. My cousin did a little demo for me one time. He had me stand next to him then touched the chain of his running saw to the heart and cut about an inch in. I was blasted with oily, turpentine smelling blobs that stuck to me. He would also mash it up and use it for wound dressing and told me that the old-timers used it for intestinal worms and coughs. If you carved small chips and then mashed it up with a stone patiently, you could separate the fibrous material from the rosin and end up with a cream almost like Vaseline. Seemed like it took him a few hours to get a blob about the size of an almond. Another thing that I found very interesting as a kid was that if the tree had fallen with the top uphill, the heart would be much larger than ones that had fallen flat and if they fell with the tops downhill, they probably wouldn't have any heart at all. They would still have resinous cores but just not the soft soapy hearts so we would ignore them if they were fallen downhill.

That is by far the best tutorial on finding fatwood that I have seen. And I have watched dozens. Thank you. I can't wait to get out and try it.

I want somebody to look at me the way this guy looks at fatwood. Sweet vid man.

i never go in the woods anymore but im obsessed with fatwood. thanks youtube. last year it was cast iron pans which ive never owned.

This is one of the best tutorial on finding fatwood. Very good video

Finally ! Everybody is talking about fat wood but you answered what it is and where it could be and how to identify it , etc ... thanks

Nicely done, the old folks used to break the tips of trees that would be used to build log cabins one year earlier of cutting them just to make the trees pump a lot resin to cure the wound they created, making the wood stronger and better for construction, it would not easily rot alway. Have a happy new year and Cheers my friend, also thank you for sharing the knowledge with us.

I have a milk crate full of pine knot, passed to me , collected by my GRANDFATHER , 35 years ago. It still has some of its fire starting QUALITY. Nature is wonderful. Thanks.

2:50 You do this in Australia you would probably dig up 2 eastern browns, 4 red belly blacks, 5 red back spiders, a funnel web and maybe a salt water crock. Good vid, cheers.

Thank you for this video ,I found a massive stump of fatwood at my family deer camp in Texas.I have pitched my tent next to it for about 25 years.

It also dawned on me watching this, why wild fires are so aggressive. Imagine all that terpineol left behind when a fire breaks out, it's like having jugs full of gasoline all over the forest bed. Great tut btw, thx 4 sharing your insight.

Thanks Nick,very straightforward and informative,amazing to think at 58 you can still learn something useful ,CHEERS from England.

I wouldn't have looked twice at those rotten pine knots before...

This video made the most sense of all the ones I've watched so far. Changed my whole perspective on walking through the woods

This is amazing. Thanks for taking the time to show us this. You know, ive seen these knots all over, but never have asked myself why they remain when the rest of the tree has near rotted away. It also doesnt leave much of a footprint to collect it in this manner. I appreciate that. Ill be checking out your other videos. Definitely worth a sub!

By far the best fatwood video ever! You tell exactly what to look for, and also showed correct way to use a ferro rod to start it, plus how to clean the saw.

Great vid! I've watched hundreds of Fatwood videos, made many myself, this one is way above average. Great sound recording plus just cool ideas on finding Fatwood just on the ground.

Nick I cannot believe I only just found your channel. There are far too few bushcrafters in the southern west/west coast with worthwhile channels like yours. I'm from SoCal and have fallen in love with bushcraft/ survival but have felt like it wasnt possible because of all the desert surrounding me. I have been completely wrong. Thank you for sharing everything with me on your channel. I appreciate it completely.

Nick, very much appreciated! Without a doubt one of the most practical/ informative (very well explained) bushcraft vids I've seen.